CHRISTIAN SCIENCE teaches that man is spiritual, and makes the first chapter of Genesis its authority, because it is there stated that he was made in God's image and likeness, and we know that nothing unspiritual enters into the being of God. By the same rule we know that nothing unlike God could enter into the character of the perfect man. The average mortal does not readily accept this view of being, surrounded as he seems to be by such universal evidence of materiality; but he should question himself as to what possible aid this material sense can afford in the working out of his salvation.
Here it may be asked: Who has ever been helped to lay off mortality for immortality by believing that his life is in the flesh? Since time began, was it ever known that a single human being was encouraged to a godly life, to love his neighbor, or to express a noble character, that is, to be a real man, on account of his materiality? On the contrary, all the arguments that are advanced to support the claim of evil power and intelligence are based upon material sense-evidence, while one's daily experience goes to show that fleshly tendencies are not conducive to holy living.
Paul stated that "flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God;" hence it must be that flesh and blood never belonged to that kingdom, and that what is seen as material, mortal man could never have been and is not now God's type of man. This man is graphically described by Mrs. Eddy in Science and Health when she says, "The sinless joy,—the perfect harmony and immortality of Life, possessing unlimited divine beauty and goodness without a single bodily pleasure or pain,—constitutes the only veritable, indestructible man, whose being is spiritual" (p. 76).
